Politics. Sex. Science. Art. You know, the good stuff.

Stephanie Zvan is an analyst by trade, but she's paid not to talk about it. She is also the associate president of Minnesota Atheists and one of the hosts for their radio show and podcast, Atheists Talk. She speaks on science and skepticism in a number of venues, including science fiction and fantasy conventions.

Stephanie has been called a science blogger and a sex blogger, but if it means she has to choose just one thing to be or blog about, she's decided she's never going to grow up. In addition to science and sex and the science of sex, you'll find quite a bit of politics here, some economics, a regular short fiction feature, and the occasional bit of concentrated weird.

Oh, and arguments. She sometimes indulges in those as well. But I'm sure everything will be just fine. Nothing to worry about. Nothing at all.

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EVENTS

Voting Against Norm

There are plenty of reasons to vote against Norm Coleman for senator. He was chosen by Karl Rove to be one of the Bush administration’s buddies in the Senate. He’s a political windsock, going from being a Democrat when city elections required it to being a Republican thug in the Senate to swinging back toward centrist in time for the big local paper to give him this ringing endorsement:

Coleman didn’t begin his Senate service as an agent of bipartisanship. But that’s the note on which he wound up his six-year term and which he has sounded repeatedly in his reelection campaign.

In fact, Coleman almost wasn’t elected senator at all. In 2002, Paul Wellstone would most likely have been elected to his third term in the Senate, despite just having voted against the popular-at-the-time Iraq war resolution. Norm Coleman was a failed gubernatorial candidate, having lost to a professional wrestler four years prior. If it hadn’t been for a plane accident eleven days before the election and some gross misrepresentations of what happened at Wellstone’s memorial, Coleman would probably have been a failed senatorial candidate as well.

Coleman is, at least professionally, a protect-marriage bigot. Despite his campaigning on a family values platform, his womanizing is well enough known that when Garrison Keillor referred to it in Salon, there was some murmuring about bad taste, but no stronger reaction. Despite having model/actress wife and a mistress, Coleman appears to feel entitled to more. Whenever his name comes up, stories like this and this are told of a grab-handy Norm. Put enough of these stories together, and you end up with a picture of a Coleman who likes to come onto women in no position to say no to him, those who have to choose between him and their jobs.

Coleman’s sense of entitlement isn’t limited to sex. He’s currently in his third corruption inquiry of the year. This one involves a CEO suing over payments he says his company improperly made to be funneled to Coleman. The first was over who pays what for Coleman’s DC apartment. Another was fueled by Coleman’s campaign refusing to answer questions about who buys his expensive suits. Coleman seem to have earned his place on the most corrupt list.

Then we get to the campaign itself. Coleman has run an ad campaign so negative that voters not only said it was disgusting, but were actually motivated to vote for someone else. He has again used lies about people remembering Wellstone for his own political gain. He is again suing a political opponent in the last days of a race over advertising. And in a new low, even for him, he just tried to disaffiliate himself from an appalling piece of negative campaigning (a comic book mailer, ironically about rape jokes) while repeating all its allegations for the press.

In short, Coleman’s political stance is determined by expedience, an expedience that includes both campaign support and personal gifts. He’s made it a practice to run the kind of campaigns that divide a country already steeped in vitriol. And I wouldn’t trust him to represent my interests in Congress any more than I would trust him in the smoky back room of a bar.

The race between Coleman and Franken is very, very close. Unless every single Franken supporter gets out and votes, and right now makes even a small donation to the Franken campaign, there is a pretty good chance we’ll get stuck with Coleman again. This law suit of his is astonishing. Considering that the Coleman campaign has been NOTHING BUT defamation against Franken, it just makes my jaw drop. Anybody want to take this bet? If Coleman is reelected, he will leave office within four years due to ethics violation.

No bet. Norm’s the kind of twerp who can’t see why he shouldn’t get anything he wants, no matter what kind of promises he’s made about not reaching for it (mayoral election promises not to run for higher office, marriage vows, oaths of office). He’s hopeless. His only chance is being surrounded by people who will look the other way for him. That’s not happening this election.

In the hearsay (but from a trusted source) dept., I had a girlfriend whose parents belong to the same Tennis Club that Coleman belongs too. She was at the club one day when he was playing tennis with his daughter, and his method of “coaching” was to berate her continually during the day. He is slime and a dirtbag. Slease in an expensive suit, and I can’t believe people vote for him.I would take your bet, Greg, but I really hope that Franken wins this one. I’ll take a satirist faithful to his wife over a family values guy who thinks he has the right to any chick he chooes.

During the Ventura election Laura and I were in California (we voted absentee) and everybody wanted to know how on Earth Ventura won. We explained that Humphrey was Minnesota’s most boring politician and Norm Coleman was a giant snake about fifty times in one day. Funny thing is I no longer think of him as a snake so much as a giant slithering bag of pus. One of my very few regrets this cycle is that we can’t vote against Coleman now that we live in Wisconsin. We did give Franken money, but it’s just not the same.

Mike, it’s long been my impression that those kids are basically accessories. Your story makes me very sad but doesn’t surprise me at all.Kelly, that reminds me of something I left out. I’ve always found it very interesting that the people who like Coleman the least (aside from waitresses) are the people whose mayor he was. Seems rather telling to me.